Before leaving for their summer experience in Israel, the 20 Diller Teen Fellowship participants ransacked their closets.
But not to pack. Rather, they emptied them out, and held a garage sale. Whatever they didn’t sell — which was a lot — they donated to Goodwill.
And off they went to Israel, with $300 that they would give away to a cause they found worthy.
The teen leadership program has traditionally culminated with a trip to Israel. But the outbreak of the second intifada has kept many such groups away. For several years, the program — which is jointly run by the S.F.-based Israel Center and Bureau of Jewish Education — sought other options. In 2001, the teens went to Costa Rica, then the Southwest in 2002 and Argentina last year.
Though they returned to Israel this summer, the teens avoided Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And while the official trip was three weeks, the teens had an option to spend an additional three weeks on a kibbutz — which most did. But it wasn’t just any kibbutz; it was Kibbutz Megiddo, where Ilan Vitemberg, director of the Diller program, grew up.
Vitemberg made sure the teens got beyond the usual teen trip to Israel.
They helped paint a community center in Kfar Yuval, for recent arrivals from Cochin, India, and they put on a carnival for new immigrants from Ethiopia.
“They got a slap in the face of what reality is for new immigrants, which was very powerful,” said Vitemberg.
Some of the Ethiopians they met had only been in Israel a few months.
“Mostly what we did with them, we didn’t need to talk,” said Becky Bob-Waksberg, a Diller teen from Palo Alto. “We did face-painting, arts and crafts, hand games, and they braided my hair.”
Bob-Waksberg said that before they went to the absorption center, they had a discussion about community service and how it benefits both parties involved.
“We talked not only about giving but getting,” said Bob-Waksberg. “I’ve heard that a million times, but the Ethiopian kids made it clear for me what we were doing there. It could be awkward, like I’m the benefactor and I’m helping them, but it’s important to realize what you’re getting out of it, too.”
Early on, the group went on a camping trip in the Negev. Not only was it sort of a survival-training exercise, it was meant to foster team-building and group dynamics as well.
For Brian Levenson of Mountain View, the desert was “a little bit hot,” but the camping trip was “incredible.”
“It was a physical challenge, but for different reasons for everyone. Some had never been camping, and some had bad ankles,” he said. “Going out into the desert and sleeping under the stars brought the group really close together.”
Vitemberg tried to make sure the visitors got a well-balanced view of Israel. For instance, when they visited a tourist site run by Bedouins, where one can sip tea in a tent and ride a camel — which they did — they also visited a Bedouin family who lived in one of the villages “unrecognized” by Israel. There, they learned firsthand what that means. (Israel does not provide municipal services such as running water and electricity, for example.)
And at the Givat Haviva Educational Foundation in the Northern Sharon Valley, they participated in a seminar in its Jewish-Arab Center for Peace. There they listened to a lecture on Zionism, given by an Israeli Jew, and also to the experiences of an Israeli Arab.
Levenson said the Arab speaker really touched people with his story. “It was obvious that there were people with very set opinions, and they didn’t necessarily change, but some people who thought one way, were understanding a little more” after hearing the speaker, he said.
The teens were also taken to a hill where they could look down upon Barta’a, a Palestinian village in the West Bank that fell on the Israeli side of the security barrier.
“We saw the way the Green Line runs, and the way the wall runs around it,” said Levenson. “Even though I read about the controversy in the newspaper, it was really interesting to see it.”
The night before they left, the teens — whose trip was underwritten by the Helen Diller Family Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund — voted on where to give the money they had raised at the garage sale. They decided on Givat Haviva, for its exchange program for Israeli Jewish and Arab children.
Bob-Waksberg said she was grateful for the chance to see Israel in all of its complexity — something that few teenagers visiting Israel actually do.
“It’s important to see what everyone else is seeing, but at the same time, we went a little deeper,” she said. “We saw the good side of Israel, and the not so good. We had such a different perspective than most of the groups we met.”